Till won his first contest, good job! But there were many great pictures this time. So many I picked two "Janina's choice" winners... sorry, but how can you compare two great Portal pictures?

CONGRATULATIONS TO THE WINNERS:

1) Till & Caribou3) Lefiou4) Ildorf5) ADePALMA1251

"Janina's choice": sexyshane & Anubis2705

The next contest will start in a couple of hours. The winners got more space for uploads and Till can make a wish now.EDIT: Sorry, I did not notice that Caribou has the same rating as Till. Both won the 1st place!

wow, thanks guys! never thought of mining because there were so manny great ones... Thanks!

and of course congrats to the others!

*edit: uhm, wait. How was this managed? Don't think Im not happy about winning but Caribou and me have the same rating by the same number of votes. I guess because I never won before, right? Or did you throw a coin?

Alas, what bugs me, that Lefiou's somewhat awesome, yet recycled pic got so high.... It's like a free-kill to me, which is just plainly unfair. I don't know how about you guys, but I propose a new rule: No reposting old pics, either make a new, either remake your picture so it will be SIGNIFIETLY different than the original, or post an old pic that you haven't uploaded yet. Who's with me?

uhm, wait. How was this managed? Don't think Im not happy about winning but Caribou and me have the same rating by the same number of votes. I guess because I never won before, right? Or did you throw a coin?

I noticed that too, I'm guessing that it's done alphabetically by picture name as the other galleries are. But I'm far from sore about it, you deserved the win regardless.

Eggyslav wrote:

Alas, what bugs me, that Lefiou's somewhat awesome, yet recycled pic got so high.... It's like a free-kill to me, which is just plainly unfair. I don't know how about you guys, but I propose a new rule: No reposting old pics, either make a new, either remake your picture so it will be SIGNIFIETLY different than the original, or post an old pic that you haven't uploaded yet. Who's with me?

That's always been my motto, but that's never going to be anything more than an informal pact; we don't even know if Lefiou (and others) reads this forum. And considering the amount of people who struggle to obey the rules as it is I'd be reluctant to add more.

I made a personal commitment when I first started uploading pictures to my gallery that I was never going to reuse any of them in a contest, but it would be unfair of me to expect others to stick to that too. If anything, that discourages people from uploading pictures to their galleries: after all, an appropriate contest might come up at any time so it might be better to hang onto it for a while. Take the male/female musicians topics, for example: I don't dislike either of my entries, but they're both a million miles from being my best work in those categories. I went with them anyway, not expecting them to really get anywhere (and they didn't ), because of rules I imposed on myself; I'm really not too comfortable with expecting everyone else to do the same. (And in the current contest, since I don't play a hell of a lot of modern games anyway, I genuinely considered breaking my own rule and re-upping my Limbo picture, so I could at least enter something - though in the end I'm glad I forced myself to make something new, because I'm really happy with how it turned out. I practically came when I figured out the hockey puck fits on the end of the tie like that).

But don't get me wrong, I completely understand the frustration. When SoxKid's old Iron Man picture won the Movies/Games contest that I'd been winning for the past two weeks whilst out of gallery space, and I ended up finishing outside the top 5, I very silently hit the fucking roof. I'm glad I didn't make a big deal of it though, because on balance it seems to me like forcing people to only upload new pictures is the same as penalising them for having good ideas in the past.

I guess the best solution is to think of the best picture in that category that you've ever seen anyone make... and then do a better one.

Oh no, sorry! I just did not see it. I checked the correct order but not if two of you had the same rating. So Caribou AND Till won the 1st place, I will remeber this for the Hall of Fame . And of course Caribou has a free wish now as well.

Regarding the use of old pictures: I understand how this is bothering you, but as long as they were not used for another contest before I think we should not ban them. We cannot know where other people published their entries before. So it would be a disadvantage to have a user gallery here and show your best work in it. If we add a rule that the pictures must be new, I do not know how I could check this for all the other entries of people without a user gallery. But I like Caribou's idea of an informal pact. Try to be better than what you have seen or done before!

Doesn't it make things more complicated if we have ties in a contest? There might be other instances in the past where people have received the same ratings, but we'd never noticed, and it seems like way too much effort to go back and check now. If the board software decided Till was the winner, I'm happy to stick with that.

(It also means I don't have to figure out what ties mean for the points system of the leaderboard thread. )

It hasn't ever seemed to be an issue, so I don't think there's any need for "ties". Something I've had on my mind for a while now, is how little votes there have been in the recent contests since the new site arrived. And it kinda blows. I was looking throgh The Hall of Justice and saw a post by Caribou, that I've also thought now for quite some time about how this site can't help but seem like "an exclusive clique", and I just think it's a shame.

Yes, unfortunately we have half the pictures and half the voters compared to the old gallery. But I am not sure if that is because we seem like an exclusive clique.I already promote the contests on Facebook, Twitter and Google+, but maybe I should do this on the main page of www.sp-studio.de more often.

The ratings were difficult to check in the old gallery because they were only shown as stars (I think the number was only shown in the details of the picture). But I went through the last contests here and they seem okay. I found only one similar case: Religion: 2) Ildorf and bella

Now that we know it we can have an eye on this, I am sure I will remember to check the Top5 after a contest is over .